The wait will be longer

Big news day Friday. Two major themes, and I will address each.

1. There has been a blacklist published in Russia of home study agencies that have 1 or more delinquent post placement reports. Our home study agency made the list. We don't know how this will ultimately affect us. We could have to find a new home study agency, our agency could get their name cleared from the list, or since our adoption agency Buckner is not on the list and they are the ones to guarantee our post placement reports we may not have anything to do. Our social worker has been very open and helpful so I think this can be resolved. I also think that this will not be a problem until the court hearing, so we have several months to deal with it.

2. It seems that the Hague treaty on adoption set a new format for apostilles. Until this week that had not been noted by too many people. But in the true style of a bureaucrat somebody decided that only documents appostilled with this new format could be accepted. Our documents had made it all the way to Khab, they had been translated, and they had been delivered to the governmental officials in that region and been accepted. The only thing they lacked was the official notice of registration. This edict about only accepting the Hague format came down and our documents were returned to the Buckner officials in Khab. So we are waiting to see if these documents can be grandfathered, or they will have to come back to us and we can go to baton rouge and get them re-appostilled. The wording is all the same, the difference is that instead of being done on a piece of 81/2 x 11" paper they are to be done on a 9cm by 9cm piece of paper with some other random margin requirement.

Even in my dreams I find myself crying out in prayer for our kids. I pray every time that God is holding them, and that when we get to they will recognize our touch as His. I don't know how God will be able to affect the heart of a non-believing government employee in Russia, so I pray that there is a believer who will work on our case and God can use them. Or that he will use somebody that doesn't even know they are being used of God, just that they are willing.

I don't know what this does to our time line. At least we know that our documents were acceptable, and we are almost registered. We will be in contact with the secretary of state's office on Monday to see if they can prepare to make the changes. Jay Dardenne, here I come...